Series: Key Concepts in Journalism

The public, James Carey famously wrote, is the "god-term" of journalism, "the term without which the entire enterprise fails to make sense." In the last thirty years, scholars have made great progress in understanding just what this means. In this much-needed new book, leading scholar David Ryfe takes readers on a journey through the literature that explores this most important...

What role can the ordinary citizen perform in news reporting? This question goes to the heart of current debates about citizen journalism, one of the most challenging issues confronting the news media today. In this timely and provocative book, Stuart Allan introduces the key concept of ‘citizen witnessing’ in order to rethink familiar assumptions underlying traditional distinctions between the ‘amateur’...